Tag: stories

Here’s the cover of the upcoming ShadowSpinners anthology to be released near the end of the month. The exact date for the print and ebook release has not been set yet, but I’ve heard print books have arrived at ShadowSpinners press and the Launch party date is set, so it’s definitely coming.

My story “A Darkquick Sky” is inside, along with an eclectic collection of dark tales from many of the amazing authors who have written for ShadowSpinners, including Cheryl Owen-Wilson, Elizabeth Engstrom, Christina Lay, Eric M. Witchey, Stephen T. Vessels, Cynthia Ray, Pamela Jean Herber, Sarina Dorie, Alexis Duran, Lisa Alber, and Alan M. Clark. I’m very excited to be in such good company, to be a part of this project, and to get my hands on this awesome book!

“Buyer Beware” is now up at Every Day Fiction. This very short story follows the professional woes of Trader Klorg and some personal complications that arise during the trans-galactic trading convention. What can I say, unregulated interstellar trade has its drawbacks.

Hope you enjoy the story! Please share, rate, and review if you have a chance.

My body swapping sci-fi farce “Buyer Beware” will appear in Every Day Fiction sometime in the next two months. This is one of the most comedic stories I’ve written, so it has a special place in my mind.

Readers of my horror stories may be surprised by the ending, but I think there is still a touch of the weird and strange in this tale of a body swapping alien and the woes of unregulated interstellar trade.

Will post again once the story is up. In the meantime, check out Every Day Fiction. They post a short story every day, always under a 1000 words.

There’s a story that Robert E. Howard used to envision the ghost of King Conan behind him, ready to lop off his head with an axe if he didn’t keep writing. Never mind that this is probably an apocryphal story. It’s still a great image, and whatever Howard was doing to get his stories written, it worked!

Work habits are a subject of endless conversation when it comes to the creative process of writers. Numerous books and excellent teachers suggest various methods of accomplishing the noble goal of putting words on a page, and offer plenty of encouragement along the way. The most consistent truth, however, is simply that writing is hard work and the methods for getting that work done vary from writer to writer.

I have a lot of tricks to keep me writing: new locations, graph paper, computer setup, a cup of tea, timed sessions, word counts, and so on. We develop habits, of course, particular to our individual sensibilities. Sometimes these habits become rituals, even obsessions. There’s plenty of room for eccentricities.

Hemingway wrote standing up. Nabokov wrote everything on notecards. Ibsen wrote in the presence of a giant oil painting of his greatest rival. Hugo wrote naked, and had his valet hide his clothes to ensure he wouldn’t go out. The ancient Greek writer Demosthenes accomplished the same thing by shaving one side of his head before beginning to write. The list goes on, from Balzac’s coffee and lucky monk’s robe, to Dickens’ ritualized desk arrangements, from Dumas’ fresh apples to Schiller’s rotten apples.

As it turns out, there’s even some neuroscience to explain why these weird rituals work. Like a Pavlov’s bell, rituals associated with writing may cue creativity and productivity. (See “Why Weird Writing Rituals Work” by Rosanne Bane)

Most of the habits of writers we will never know, because they are done in solitude. But the purpose of some seemingly strange behaviors is almost always the same, and that is to help one engage in the most important habit of all: actually writing.

A young botanist finds more than than he bargained for when he enters an ancient forest in search of a new species of tree. A horror awaits him in the heart of the old growth.

“Old Growth” is now available as a .99 cent Kindle eBook. First published in AlienSkin in 2009, this story links the Pacific Northwest with many of my other horror stories set in Auxerre, Wisconsin.

As I said in an earlier post, this story was inspired by a conversation I overheard. Two girls were talking about how they were afraid to go into the woods behind their house. They were really scared and it stuck with me. A couple of months later this story was born. There’s a lot of woods in Oregon, and some say deep in the old growth, are strange things still unknown to man.

Fantasy, with all its weirdness and wonders, is the deep root of all fiction. Long before people began to write books, for 50,000 years they huddled around the light of fires, under starry skies, in deep forests, and in the shelter of caves to tell their stories. The impulse of fiction was already there, in the myths and legends that were born among them.

Imagine the kinds of stories they were telling. People knew little or nothing of what lay beyond the horizon. And at night, in the darkness, that circle of knowledge shrank to the dim glow of a campfire, if they were lucky enough to have one. The stars were a mystery, animals were otherworldly, and death was a great enigma. A man or a woman who ventured beyond the horizon, or out in the night, might never return. Those tales must have been dark and strange, filled with adventure, monsters, and magic.

There is an element of fantasy in all fiction, an attempt to imagine and understand something beyond ourselves: another person, another life, another world. Modern stories are born from that same original impulse, to weave tales, to entertain, to educate, to warn, and to find meaning in the world and in the often extraordinary experiences of our lives. I like to think my stories can be traced back to the mythic structures and weird tales that started it all, stories woven from the threads of an ancient dream.

Although our horizon has grown wider in a way, there is always an edge, without and within, beyond which dwell things unknown. The unknown is far greater than the known, and that is where horror lives. It lurks in the darkness beyond our meager campfires.

Dungeon Solitaire Reviews

"Since its release, I've been playing game after game when I can find the time, and this solo card game is exactly what I tried cobbling together years ago. It's an amazing game ..." --Tim Snider, The Savage Afterworld

"The best thing going for DS-LoS is that it's a lot of fun. If the Labyrinth of Souls were only a Tarot deck, it'd still be great, but what really pushes it over the top is that the game for which the deck was made is terrific fun." --James Bulls, Left Hand Tarot

"Dungeon Solitaire is incredibly rich and thought-provoking. This game takes you by surprise." --Geoffrey Greer, Past Go Gaming

We all have seen a few experiments with D&D and poker cards, but this is the one that finally pulls it off. Smart, fast, elegant, easy to learn and a lot of fun. Absolutely recommended! --Ronnie Rocket, Google+

"It is called Dungeon Solitaire ... and it is brilliant." --John Payne, Sycarion Diversions